August brings memories of war back to Japan every year. We remember dictatorship, military madness, public enthusiasm for victory, and countless deaths. Yet even as weapons evolve, perhaps history still offers clues about how peace can be sustained.
August.
Once again this year, there have been many television programs looking back on the Second World War.
Dictators exercising absolute power.
Military leaders running out of control.
Crowds intoxicated by victory.
And, in the end, an appalling number of deaths.
War should never happen, and yet societies somehow arrive at the absurd conclusion that they have no choice but to fight.
Each person has only one life, and yet lives are lost so easily—and in such enormous numbers.
We speak of passing down the memories of war to future generations, but there is an old Japanese saying: once the pain has passed, people forget how much it hurt.
Eventually, perhaps everyone will forget just how terrible war really was.
And while those memories fade, weapons continue to develop. Humanity has even created nuclear weapons.
Looking at the Russia-Ukraine war and the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, two developments have particularly caught my attention.
One is drone warfare.
The other is asymmetric warfare.
Ukraine quickly began producing drones on an almost household scale in response to Russia. What began in small workshops now seems to have grown large enough to form a military industry of its own.
Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz was another shift in thinking.
It showed that even without large-scale direct combat, it is possible to have an enormous impact on the global economy.
Drones and the closure of a strategic sea route are very different from nuclear weapons with their overwhelming destructive power. Yet they can still become means of challenging a much greater power.
A major power may find it relatively easy to use its overwhelming military strength, but there must be many different forms of deterrence that can be devised against it.
People often say that most things human beings can imagine eventually become reality.
Something that someone, somewhere in the world is thinking about today may surely become possible someday.
If that is so, perhaps peace itself should also be something we can make possible.
And yet, for some reason, that remains extraordinarily difficult.
Japan once experienced a long period without large-scale warfare.
During the Edo period, from after the Shimabara Rebellion until the final years of the shogunate, Japan went for more than two centuries with almost no major domestic war.
War must never be allowed to happen, no matter what.
Peace may take many different forms.
Even so, could we not learn something from at least part of the way Japan maintained peace in those days?
Peace may take many forms, but surely history still has something to teach us about how to keep war from returning.
・・・
Vocabulary for Learners
absolute power
Complete control over a country or organization without meaningful limits.
絶対的な権力、専制的な権力
run out of control
To become impossible to control or restrain.
暴走する、制御不能になる
intoxicated by victory
So excited by winning that people lose calm judgment.
勝利に熱狂して冷静さを失う
appalling
Extremely shocking or terrible.
ぞっとするような、ひどい
pass down
To give knowledge, traditions, or memories to the next generation.
後世に伝える、受け継ぐ
asymmetric warfare
Conflict in which the two sides have very different military strength or methods.
非対称戦争、非対称的な戦い
deterrence
The prevention of an attack by making the possible cost too high.
抑止、抑止力
strategic sea route
An important shipping route with military or economic significance.
戦略的に重要な海上交通路
destructive power
The ability to cause enormous damage or destruction.
破壊力
shogunate
A government ruled by a shogun in premodern Japan.
幕府
#WarAndPeace
#LessonsFromHistory
#EdoPeriod
#Peace
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